You must understand: I am only a tinker. Bring me a broken mechanism, and I will fix it. I will not give my opinions, I will not make alterations, I will not question its usage—especially not when the client is one so wise as King Agassay, He-Who-Has-Slain-Thousands, forever may he reign. I simply observe how a thing is meant to function and restore it.
In recent years I have specialized in the repair of artefacts, ancient devices dredged from sunken Araghast or from the forgotten sands of Lathia. This is why the king’s messengers honored me with their presence on the eve of the Death Feast.
They came at dusk, in their bright livery and jangling bells, just as I was preparing an offering of lentils and fat for the hungry dead. I had not yet carved the names of my children into the godbone, but the king’s messengers pointed out to me—rightly, quite rightly—that the desires of King Agassay, recently decreed a living god himself, outweigh any other.
They stripped my workshop bare, bundling my tools and materials into a wagon drawn by hulking auroch, and we set off for the Splendorous City.
* * *
My first sight of the palace, a labyrinth of limestone carved by a thousand warslaves, pulled the breath from my lungs. I was led to a high-vaulted room that would serve as my new workshop, and there I learned my task. Not from King Agassay himself, of course—his barefaced perfection would have burned my eyes to ash in their sockets—but from his Third Advisor.
She was a tall woman, mouth scarrified in the manner of the south, and while she spoke, she peeled layer after layer of spiderwool from a strangely shaped object atop the workbench. King Agassay, forever may he reign, has long admired the ancient dynasties of the Gray Steppes. Though they are a debased people now, scavengers and animal-worshippers, they were once ruled by great monarchs.
The last veil fell away, and I saw it: the celestial crown of the Steppefolk, pilfered—liberated, rather—in King Agassay’s most recent excursion northward. It was a jagged and beauteous thing, enormously intricate, a heavy golden head-dress equipped with concentric halos I knew, by tinker’s instinct, had once whirled in lockstep with the heavenly bodies above.
Those who wore this crown ruled unquestioned, the Third Advisor said. King Agassay will wear it when he declares his dominion over the Gray Steppes. You will restore it for him.
* * *
The crown became my life. Its mechanisms were precise, delicate; their functions obscured by centuries of corrosion, and I had no blueprints to aid me—only legends. Deep in the palace archives, I found tablets etched with tales of the ancient north and its ruling lineage, monarchs who in the very moment of their coronation were said to become like gods, to shed all human cruelties and flaws in judgment.
The tales were riddled with mistranslations and scant on mechanical details, but they fueled my fervor for the task. I scraped grime from the crown’s clockwork innards, one grain at a time, and scoured away the stains accumulated around its curious slatted openings. Many components required replacement, in whole or in part.
I was reasonably certain that the trio of empty sockets within had once carried lodestones; the Third Advisor agreed to procure them. In the meanwhile I restored the mask that would conceal the king’s noble features, the yoke that would perch on his mighty shoulders, the struts that would whirl the heavens about his blameless head.
The work occupied my days and haunted my nights. I dreamed often of a serene golden smile.
* * *
When the Third Advisor came to me with the lodestones a month later, the celestial crown was ready to be worn. I was proud of my work: its rebuilt yoke recalled the golden mane of a hunting lion, and its mask now gleamed like the face of the sun. Extending outward in all directions, suspended on razor-edged wires, were representations of the other known bodies, from the looming moon to far-flung Oranos.
I placed the lodestones in their sockets, and the crown’s mechanism sprang to life. We stood transfixed as the heavens rotated, first slowly, then in a dizzying blur. The king who wore this crown would become the flawless center of all known things, the sun about which all other celestial bodies turned.
Before it could complete its pattern, I pulled the lodestones free. The dancing struts slowed and stopped. I rewound the mechanism with trembling fingers.
You have done well, the Third Advisor said. What do you wish as payment?
And because she could not return me my dead, I asked to attend the coronation.
* * *
King Agassay chose to declare his sovereignty over the Steppefolk in the conquered city of Delia, both for its religious significance and for its windswept beauty. Standing atop a pyramidal plinth, surrounded by the desecrated corpses of the city’s holy mares, overlooking a vast crowd of warslaves ready to be marched southward, he donned the celestial crown at last.
He was not so tall and broad as the songs say; he staggered a little beneath its weight. But when he straightened he looked magnificent, fierce, like a king who truly had slain thousands on the battlefield—not merely ordered thousands to their deaths in endless excursions to the north and pointless aggressions in the south, warring against those who were once trade-neighbors and allies.
The crown’s razorous wires whipped through the air, faster and faster, a halo of gleaming metal. They reached their utmost extension, and I thought of three things, three driving lodestones:
How the archived tales recorded nothing of the kings’ decisions, only those of their advisors.
How old my sons and daughter would be, had they not been conscripted.
How difficult it is, to shed all human cruelties.
Then the wires plunged inward, through those curious slatted openings, and King Agassay became blameless. Forever may he reign.
* * *
Ⓒ Rich Larson
Originally published in Flame Tree Newsletter, January 2025. Reprinted here by permission of the author.